Recent literary debates in Sweden have dwelled, among things, on authors' love lives and penchant for designer handbags. Yet there is more out there if one looks: Hans Koppel's hatchet job on suburban manners, for example, or Magnus Hedlund's explorations of human perception. [German version added]

In Richard Florida's "creative city", the creative class dissolves the classical division between the productive bourgeoisie and the bohemian. But creativity strategies have been crafted to co-exist with urban socio-economic problems, not to solve them. [German version added]

"Esprit" watches market prophecies self-fulfil; "Blätter" calls off the bets in the financial casino; "Mute" refutes the received wisdom about inflation; "Dilema veche" notes how the financial crisis is reimposing the East-West divide; "New Humanist" turns to Durkheim to make sense of the depression; "Wespennest" doesn't give in to resignation; "Le Monde diplomatique" (Berlin) enters the belly of the piggy bank; "Vikerkaar" heeds cultures' anthropophagic appeal; "Dialogi" warns of a cultural wasteland in Maribor; and "Kritika & Kontext" returns a lost son to Bratislava.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been criticized from all sides since its inception sixty years ago. Conor Gearty calls for a fresh definition of this most humanist value.

This year the world has seen the power of money to socialize the costs of capitalist crisis, but are prices going to go on rising to Weimar-like levels? Jon Amsden explores the origins of the crisis and discerns something worse than inflation on the horizon.

Drug trafficking is "a highly productive industry" in Mexico, writes Juan Villoro. Corruption; a severe lack of freedom of expression; and excessive violence characterize the country as it is today.

Attention has to be paid to the individual victims of a small minority in pursuit of limitless and obscene wealth and power, writes Giuliano Mesa. Resignation in the face of the dominance of economic logic must be resisted!

Banks collapsing, homes repossessed, jobs disappearing... no wonder the world is in despair. Steven Lukes turns to Emile Durkheim to make sense of the real depression. Is there a remedy for "the malady of infinite aspiration"?

Despite talk of a "unified European plan" to combat recession, the motto among EU member states seems to be "each to his own". The financial crisis is reimposing the divide between eastern and western Europe, writes Mircea Vasilescu.

Self-regulation by the market has turned out to be an illusion: what's needed now is more governmental regulation of financial markets along with caps on managerial salaries, writes Heiner Flassbeck.

The financial crisis has made it clear how vital, yet how fragile, capitalism is. In solidarity, Glänta magazine would like to share its cultural capital. Sponsorship of the financial sector is not an act of charity!

In Bulgarian political discourse, to talk of the nation means to talk non-politically. Advertising makes visible this depoliticization of the national.

Critical discussion of foreign literature serves as a source of information not only for readers but also for the "trade". When that discussion disappears or becomes one-sided, this has consequences for the literary institution as a whole. [Danish version added]

The reaction to the Kundera allegations in the Czech Republic has largely been one of doubt rather than blame. Miroslav Balastík wonders whether the incident signifies the end of a phase of post-communism in the Czech Republic.

When Ivan Klima and fellow writers spoke out against censorship in Czechoslovakia at the 1967 Writers' Congress, the literary weekly "Literární noviny" was taken out of the hands of the writers union and its editorial board dismissed. Yet the seed was sown for the Prague Spring of 1968.

Krystian Woznicki notes that art, in times of globalization, faces the question of the representability of community -- or rather, its unrepresentability. The latter includes the community of the excluded.

Instead of two homogeneous European regions -- "the East" and "the West" -- there are now fragments, enclaves, and islands. From Baden-Baden to Bucharest, Majorca to Moscow, Karl Schlögel experiences Europe as a series of spaces both distinct and connected. [French version added]

"Samtiden" questions the concept of female literature; "Arche" takes stock after the elections in Belarus; "Springerin" unveils the veil; "Merkur" detects an urban moral disaster; "Res Publica Nowa" musters the phantoms of a non-existing metropolis; "FA-art" sees literature caught between commitment and autonomy; "Mittelweg 36" re-reads the "good German" W.G. Sebald; "Revolver Revue" points out the difference between the camera and the pen; "Revista Crítica" asks why young people have a problem with politics; and "Glänta" writes the encyclopaedia of the future.

Roger Scruton bemoans the "moral disaster" of cities in which "no one wishes to live, where public spaces are vandalized and private spaces boarded up". He lays the blame at the door of modern architecture à la Le Corbusier or Walter Gropius. Yet there is hope: the "New Urbanism" of Léon Krier.

"We need alternatives to the thought that our only options are private or public ownership." Michael Hardt talks at the European Social Forum about his forthcoming collaboration with Antonio Negri, Common Wealth.